Willow Smith has discussed her experiences of having anxiety attacks on stage in a new conversation with Yungblud.
Speaking on The YUNGBLUD Podcast (per HotNewHipHop), Smith said: “I felt extremely unsafe in my music career in the past and that feeling of insecurity or unsafety like I didn’t feel protected, which went really deep.”
Explaining that many of her painful memories from early live appearances had “just been resurfacing,” the singer pinpointed a performance on The Jimmy Fallon Show as a particularly triggering moment.
“I had like a flashback of being like 10 or nine and having like an anxiety attack on set and basically feeling like everyone around me was like ‘You’re just a brat. Why aren’t you grateful?’” she said.
“They didn’t see it as an anxiety attack, they saw it as a tantrum. Now, I look back and know it was an anxiety attack. [I] tell myself that, ‘You’re not nine, you’re a grown-ass woman.’ I have to retrain my mind.
“My mental health is in a very fragile state, but I think it’s in a state where it’s about to grow in a really awesome way.”
Earlier this month (July 18), WILLOW – as she is known artistically – had her head shaved on stage during a performance of ‘Whip My Hair’.
In a four-star review of WILLOW’s new album, NME wrote: “With ‘lately I feel EVERYTHING’, the child star-turned-music-innovator sends a fond farewell to adolescence. It was a risky move, switching from conscious R&B star to grungy punk beau, but WILLOW has knocked all doubts out of the park – again.”
